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How do people manage to condemn this type of thing but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I can't work out how Americans think being

How do people manage to condemn this type of thing but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?

Larrikin 9y ago
My opinion has changed after you've marginalized a tragedy and treated it like an either or event in history. Thank you for showing that neither is important by what about ing.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  I don't really understand you. I want to know why Americans on both political wings aggressively support their soldiers. I can understand if it's a country being attacked and their own soldiers defend it. But nobody is attacking America. What good did its soldiers do by fighting wars instead of just waiting to defend?
  - meowface 9y ago
    In the US, support for soldiers is often completely orthogonal to support for the government or war plans. Soldiers are effectively considered brave men and women selflessly serving their country, even if they're fighting an unjust war. The rationalization is usually that politicians and other elites are to blame for the wars, while the soldiers are mere pawns who bear no culpability (or at least that's the perception for the ones who aren't torturing people or committing Abu Ghraib-like atrocities; those individuals are seen as a tiny minority of soldiers). They're "just following orders". As for the actual justification behind that, it's highly up for debate. But regardless, you'll generally find the vast majority of the US left in the somewhat paradoxical position of unilateral praise for soldiers with simultaneous hatred towards the government's military decisions and actions.
  - indymike 9y ago
    Two reasons: they chose to take the job (which can result in your own death and being ordered to do very difficult things in service to your country) and they are our children, brothers and sisters. Once they chose to serve, they are subject to the orders of our civilian government and so we separate the decision to go to war made by politicians from the decision to potentially die in service to our country made by soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Finally, most wars the US gets involved with are sold to the people as defense. We we sold that Iraq was behind the attack on the World Trade center and the removal of Sadam Hussein would make our country safe.
    - lopmotr 9y ago
      But didn't people learn from the Vietnam and Korean wars that they might be unnecessary for defense even if the government says so? Is it that a new generation forgets the lessons from the previous one? In that case, why not blame the soldiers - if there was little popular support for them and it was seen as a shameful or failure of a job then maybe fewer would be sucked into it. I heard that in WWI, soldiers were naive and didn't understand what they were getting into. Now though, there's no excuse. Everyone learns history at school and can use Google. So the decision to join should be fairly obviously likely to lead to doing bad things. The US has been nearly continuously at war since WWII, it's not going to suddenly stop when your son joins the army. Also, how do Americans reconcile that "my family" attitude with the fact that the people they're fighting are also somebody's sons and brothers? It's not seen as equally noble to be an Isis soldier as a US one. What makes the US special other than "my country"?
rdtsc 9y ago
> but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I Maybe not by the mainstream media, as they were getting pretty reluctant to point out things like Obama, the Nobel Prize recipient, dropping over 20k bombs in countries we were not even at war with in just 2016. Some did report though ex: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ.... Was there someone's mom or baby killed by those bombs? Was that more humane than landing a helicopter and shooting them in the head? As for general Iraq war criticism, you can still follow Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and others did a good job there. There was a video they did with drone operators who describe how they did the killing. They also currently have retrospective on My Lai as well https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/16/50_years_after_my_lai_massacre https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/16/50_years_after_my_lai... (it' s a shorter interview not a full piece like the article we are discussing).
- lopmotr 9y ago
  You bring up a possible reason - negligent killing (drone mistakes) vs bloodlust (My Lai). Maybe that's the key? They didn't intend to destroy Iraq and Syria and spawn Isis, so they're not really to blame even though they did it?
  - megous 9y ago
    Of course they are to blame. People often times go to prison if they kill someone on the road even if they didn't intend to. The people you're talking about are more to blame, given how much they were war profiteers themselves and were intertwined with war profiteering firms. Also it can't seriously be called negligent killing if there's no serious effort to reduce or let alone count the dead and find what the "mistakes" were. Probably because there are no mistakes, it's calculated acceptable "colateral damage" (I hate this euphemism). Just like after Trump changed the rules and US related killing rate rised by some 400% or so right after that.
    - lopmotr 9y ago
      I agree with you, but why don't at least left-wing Americans agree too? Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.
fractallyte 9y ago
Wait a moment - did US soldiers really murder hundreds of thousands? You can't just throw around statements like that. Iraq is an unstable conglomeration of religious and ethnic groups. The blame for this goes back to 1916: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sy... The US invasion jostled that mix, and the resulting friction directly caused those deaths. So, to be more accurate (but possibly oversimplified), the US was a witless catalyst, and the fragmentation of Islam was the fuel.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  That's what I meant by "because of". If the police and army in America suddenly vanished, you can bet a lot of deaths would ensue too. People depend on the structure of government services to protect them from each other. Taking that away is like taking away food or water.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Let's be clear what we mean by "the police and army vanishing". This is not common thugs committing crimes. Saddam Hussein was keeping a lead through tyranny (and massacres in the past) on the shia-sunni-kurd ethnic tensions which blew out when Saddam felt. Add to that mix a rise of islamism and you get a murderous civil war. None of these ingredients are really the making of the US. The US certainly ignited the war by removing the tyranny but do we really want to go the route "these guys deserve a good dictator to keep them from killing each others"?
    - b1daly 9y ago
      I think we do want to go that route. As opposed to supporting and arming dictatorships that suite our supposed interests at a given time. Then turning against them, or arming their enemies when they don’t. If the US consistently practiced being a good global citizen, maybe one could make a case for “humanitarianism military intervention” in limited cases. What we have now is apparently open ended military activity, around the globe, for an indefinite timeframe. Most of the conflicts we are party to are civil wars, and by definition these are not “winnable.” As far as I can see, the US continues to wreak havoc on innocent civilians around the world to this day, with total impunity. This serves only the interests of the corporate military political complex. The fiasco of the US response to 9/11 beggars disbelief. It’s sickening how the propaganda apartatus in the US has shutdown virtually all reporting on what our armed forces are actually doing. Perhaps the worst of the US conduct is the continual supply of arms to States and factions in conflicts around the world, thereby radically increasing the lethality of the conflict. Of course, the US is not alone in this arms dealing, but this is something where we could unilaterally make a dramatic action towards world peace. Withdraw from current wars, end arms dealing, and work towards negotiated outcomes, where possible.
afarrell 9y ago
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an American who believes that the invasion of Iraq, either in conception (many believed and many now believe we should never have invaded) or in execution (Even among those who believed that the US should have overthrown Saddam, it is a pretty common opinion that the post-war occupation was bungled tragically). The reason you don't see more condemnations of it in the American media in 2018 is that at this point, an opinion like "our involvement in Iraq was a disaster" is pretty uncontroversial and therefore boring and therefore does not result in ad revenue or re-shares. But that was largely a result of the decisions made by the civilian leaders in the Bush administration. What does that have to do with the quality or respectability of the soldiers?
- doktrin 9y ago
  At the time, the Iraq war enjoyed broad public support particularly on the right. That support persisted for over a decade, and to this day you'll still find people justifying the whole mess, arguing for the existence of "WMDs", contrasting Saddams atrocities and of course roundly blaming Obama for creating ISIS by disengaging.
  - afarrell 9y ago
    I’ll point out that your list consists of separate arguments. Some people point to the evidence Saddam had chemical weapons because they believe we found stocks of chemical weapons he’d kept even after using some on the Kurds, not because they think we should have overthrown him. Those are two separate statements—-one is a question of fact and one an opinion. Still other Americans initially opposed the invasion but believed that, having overthrown the government, we had a moral obligation to stay, develop the istitutions of the country, and prevent sectarian violence from breaking out again. I was in this camp back in 2006.
verylittlemeat 9y ago
During the Vietnam war that is what happened. Soldiers were treated like baby killers upon returning to the US. There was a sort of rebranding of the American solider after that catastrophe. The American citizen is now supposed to see the American solider as a utilitarian third party cog in a system where soldiers don't make decisions they just execute them. So if you're unhappy with the war you take out your disapproval on the government not the lowly soldier who is "just doing their job/just following orders" etc. Obviously this is very ethically questionable but I'd say it's the standard attitude towards the American soldier in my experience (in group social settings with ex-military people). The military is simply the hammer, the will of the people and politics. The hammer only acts when the hand picks it up hence we're supposed to hold the hand (government) accountable not the hammer (military).
- meowface 9y ago
  Don't know why people are downvoting you. Your description of the perception towards the government and soldiers is completely correct. You're just stating it as it is, not justifying it or saying you agree with it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
  Wait, so a attack on a soldier is wrong- and attacking the government (aka the people in a democracy) is right? So the whole of the people view themselves as a sort of warlord?
  - angersock 9y ago
    When the solider is out on the sharp end, they're goin g to make whatever policy is most likely to keep them alive modulo broad mission objectives. This had been true somewhere have been humans fighting. The time to consider the impact of this is before you deploy the solider. Ergo, to affect change, we must look at the government and not the solider.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
Yeah, the Iraqis were just sittin' around, doing nothin', having a Bud. Does anyone remember Kuwait?
- musage 9y ago
  Remember Saddam being just a-okay for the US as an ally in the 1980s, during and after all sorts of atrocities he did to Iraqis and Iranians? Remember the theater when former friend was suddenly the next Hitler? Such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony ?
- dingaling 9y ago
  Of course I remember Kuwait, slant-drilling under the Iraqi border. And the apparent, later denied, US tolerance or at least indifference when the Iraqi ambassador stated that Iraq would take direct action if Kuwait was not called into order.
snarfy 9y ago
Even with waning religious views the US is still a fairly religious and mostly christian country. I don't understand the pride at all. Pride is a sin.
- LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
  A slaves spirit has to be like this, a nice, shiny face to those carrying the whip, a raging redirected hatred, to those stripped of all rights by his master.
taneq 9y ago
The support is for individuals, not necessarily the institution.
- jstanley 9y ago
  But the individuals are doing the work for the institution. If they'd just refuse (for example, don't sign up to be a soldier working on behalf of an institution you ostensibly don't support), then it wouldn't get done.
  - taneq 9y ago
    People who don't support the military won't sign up at all. People who do sign up don't have full information on all of the operations they'll be involved in at the time they sign up, and by the time they do have that information they generally cannot legally dissent.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      I suppose it's better to murder some foreigners than to illegally dissent.
neverartful 9y ago
"I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?" I believe one of the key points is that it's not the foot soldier who makes the decision to start a war. When the soldier was drafted into the military, they had absolutely NO control whatsoever. In times without the draft (volunteer forces), one may say that individuals have some control by NOT volunteering (enlisting). But even that argument is incomplete. People enlist in the military for different reasons, and it's not as simple as pro-war vs anti-war sentiment. Some of the reasons why some enlist: economic (to support themselves and their family), learn trade/skills, carry on family legacy, sense of duty to country, to see the world, physical and mental challenge/discipline, become a fighter, coercion by others, etc. Even if a person enlists because they desire combat, that person still doesn't have any authority or ability to start a conflict. Once in combat, there's still a chain of command and accountability. When a country engages in military conflict, it is due to the decision of politicians. And once the conflict begins, it is the foot soldiers who pay the highest price. To give a counter-example to the Vietnam war, what would have happened if all of the Allied military forces rebelled and refused to participate in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in WW2? Or even if the US decided to not fight in WW2, despite Pearl Harbor attack? The officer who gave the command to massacre civilians in My Lai was wrong. Other individuals throughout the conflict inevitably did wrong. I believe that the vast majority of those who fought did so admirably and honorably. And I believe that I can have this opinion and still not be pro-war.
system16 9y ago
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad." ~ Frankie Boyle.
slantedview 9y ago
100,000s were murdered in Vietnam as well. That the US played a role in further mass murders in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on, is the legacy of the US never having the honesty to own up to its actions. It should all be condemned. The problem is that the political elite in the US doesn't see it that way. Military leaders from Vietnam who committed mass murder were awarded commendations. Soldiers who raped and tortured women and children were given awards for kill counts. A Secretary of State whose actions led to the genocide of millions of people still enjoys political celebrity. And a President who killed tens of thousands of civilians by remote control was given a Peace Prize. This is America.

Larrikin 9y ago

My opinion has changed after you've marginalized a tragedy and treated it like an either or event in history. Thank you for showing that neither is important by what about ing.

lopmotr 9y ago
I don't really understand you. I want to know why Americans on both political wings aggressively support their soldiers. I can understand if it's a country being attacked and their own soldiers defend it. But nobody is attacking America. What good did its soldiers do by fighting wars instead of just waiting to defend?
- meowface 9y ago
  In the US, support for soldiers is often completely orthogonal to support for the government or war plans. Soldiers are effectively considered brave men and women selflessly serving their country, even if they're fighting an unjust war. The rationalization is usually that politicians and other elites are to blame for the wars, while the soldiers are mere pawns who bear no culpability (or at least that's the perception for the ones who aren't torturing people or committing Abu Ghraib-like atrocities; those individuals are seen as a tiny minority of soldiers). They're "just following orders". As for the actual justification behind that, it's highly up for debate. But regardless, you'll generally find the vast majority of the US left in the somewhat paradoxical position of unilateral praise for soldiers with simultaneous hatred towards the government's military decisions and actions.
- indymike 9y ago
  Two reasons: they chose to take the job (which can result in your own death and being ordered to do very difficult things in service to your country) and they are our children, brothers and sisters. Once they chose to serve, they are subject to the orders of our civilian government and so we separate the decision to go to war made by politicians from the decision to potentially die in service to our country made by soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Finally, most wars the US gets involved with are sold to the people as defense. We we sold that Iraq was behind the attack on the World Trade center and the removal of Sadam Hussein would make our country safe.
  - lopmotr 9y ago
    But didn't people learn from the Vietnam and Korean wars that they might be unnecessary for defense even if the government says so? Is it that a new generation forgets the lessons from the previous one? In that case, why not blame the soldiers - if there was little popular support for them and it was seen as a shameful or failure of a job then maybe fewer would be sucked into it. I heard that in WWI, soldiers were naive and didn't understand what they were getting into. Now though, there's no excuse. Everyone learns history at school and can use Google. So the decision to join should be fairly obviously likely to lead to doing bad things. The US has been nearly continuously at war since WWII, it's not going to suddenly stop when your son joins the army. Also, how do Americans reconcile that "my family" attitude with the fact that the people they're fighting are also somebody's sons and brothers? It's not seen as equally noble to be an Isis soldier as a US one. What makes the US special other than "my country"?

rdtsc 9y ago

> but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I Maybe not by the mainstream media, as they were getting pretty reluctant to point out things like Obama, the Nobel Prize recipient, dropping over 20k bombs in countries we were not even at war with in just 2016. Some did report though ex: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ.... Was there someone's mom or baby killed by those bombs? Was that more humane than landing a helicopter and shooting them in the head? As for general Iraq war criticism, you can still follow Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and others did a good job there. There was a video they did with drone operators who describe how they did the killing. They also currently have retrospective on My Lai as well https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/16/50_years_after_my_lai_massacre https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/16/50_years_after_my_lai... (it' s a shorter interview not a full piece like the article we are discussing).

lopmotr 9y ago
You bring up a possible reason - negligent killing (drone mistakes) vs bloodlust (My Lai). Maybe that's the key? They didn't intend to destroy Iraq and Syria and spawn Isis, so they're not really to blame even though they did it?
- megous 9y ago
  Of course they are to blame. People often times go to prison if they kill someone on the road even if they didn't intend to. The people you're talking about are more to blame, given how much they were war profiteers themselves and were intertwined with war profiteering firms. Also it can't seriously be called negligent killing if there's no serious effort to reduce or let alone count the dead and find what the "mistakes" were. Probably because there are no mistakes, it's calculated acceptable "colateral damage" (I hate this euphemism). Just like after Trump changed the rules and US related killing rate rised by some 400% or so right after that.
  - lopmotr 9y ago
    I agree with you, but why don't at least left-wing Americans agree too? Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.

fractallyte 9y ago

Wait a moment - did US soldiers really murder hundreds of thousands? You can't just throw around statements like that. Iraq is an unstable conglomeration of religious and ethnic groups. The blame for this goes back to 1916: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sy... The US invasion jostled that mix, and the resulting friction directly caused those deaths. So, to be more accurate (but possibly oversimplified), the US was a witless catalyst, and the fragmentation of Islam was the fuel.

lopmotr 9y ago
That's what I meant by "because of". If the police and army in America suddenly vanished, you can bet a lot of deaths would ensue too. People depend on the structure of government services to protect them from each other. Taking that away is like taking away food or water.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Let's be clear what we mean by "the police and army vanishing". This is not common thugs committing crimes. Saddam Hussein was keeping a lead through tyranny (and massacres in the past) on the shia-sunni-kurd ethnic tensions which blew out when Saddam felt. Add to that mix a rise of islamism and you get a murderous civil war. None of these ingredients are really the making of the US. The US certainly ignited the war by removing the tyranny but do we really want to go the route "these guys deserve a good dictator to keep them from killing each others"?
  - b1daly 9y ago
    I think we do want to go that route. As opposed to supporting and arming dictatorships that suite our supposed interests at a given time. Then turning against them, or arming their enemies when they don’t. If the US consistently practiced being a good global citizen, maybe one could make a case for “humanitarianism military intervention” in limited cases. What we have now is apparently open ended military activity, around the globe, for an indefinite timeframe. Most of the conflicts we are party to are civil wars, and by definition these are not “winnable.” As far as I can see, the US continues to wreak havoc on innocent civilians around the world to this day, with total impunity. This serves only the interests of the corporate military political complex. The fiasco of the US response to 9/11 beggars disbelief. It’s sickening how the propaganda apartatus in the US has shutdown virtually all reporting on what our armed forces are actually doing. Perhaps the worst of the US conduct is the continual supply of arms to States and factions in conflicts around the world, thereby radically increasing the lethality of the conflict. Of course, the US is not alone in this arms dealing, but this is something where we could unilaterally make a dramatic action towards world peace. Withdraw from current wars, end arms dealing, and work towards negotiated outcomes, where possible.

afarrell 9y ago

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an American who believes that the invasion of Iraq, either in conception (many believed and many now believe we should never have invaded) or in execution (Even among those who believed that the US should have overthrown Saddam, it is a pretty common opinion that the post-war occupation was bungled tragically). The reason you don't see more condemnations of it in the American media in 2018 is that at this point, an opinion like "our involvement in Iraq was a disaster" is pretty uncontroversial and therefore boring and therefore does not result in ad revenue or re-shares. But that was largely a result of the decisions made by the civilian leaders in the Bush administration. What does that have to do with the quality or respectability of the soldiers?

doktrin 9y ago
At the time, the Iraq war enjoyed broad public support particularly on the right. That support persisted for over a decade, and to this day you'll still find people justifying the whole mess, arguing for the existence of "WMDs", contrasting Saddams atrocities and of course roundly blaming Obama for creating ISIS by disengaging.
- afarrell 9y ago
  I’ll point out that your list consists of separate arguments. Some people point to the evidence Saddam had chemical weapons because they believe we found stocks of chemical weapons he’d kept even after using some on the Kurds, not because they think we should have overthrown him. Those are two separate statements—-one is a question of fact and one an opinion. Still other Americans initially opposed the invasion but believed that, having overthrown the government, we had a moral obligation to stay, develop the istitutions of the country, and prevent sectarian violence from breaking out again. I was in this camp back in 2006.

verylittlemeat 9y ago

During the Vietnam war that is what happened. Soldiers were treated like baby killers upon returning to the US. There was a sort of rebranding of the American solider after that catastrophe. The American citizen is now supposed to see the American solider as a utilitarian third party cog in a system where soldiers don't make decisions they just execute them. So if you're unhappy with the war you take out your disapproval on the government not the lowly soldier who is "just doing their job/just following orders" etc. Obviously this is very ethically questionable but I'd say it's the standard attitude towards the American soldier in my experience (in group social settings with ex-military people). The military is simply the hammer, the will of the people and politics. The hammer only acts when the hand picks it up hence we're supposed to hold the hand (government) accountable not the hammer (military).

meowface 9y ago
Don't know why people are downvoting you. Your description of the perception towards the government and soldiers is completely correct. You're just stating it as it is, not justifying it or saying you agree with it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
Wait, so a attack on a soldier is wrong- and attacking the government (aka the people in a democracy) is right? So the whole of the people view themselves as a sort of warlord?
- angersock 9y ago
  When the solider is out on the sharp end, they're goin g to make whatever policy is most likely to keep them alive modulo broad mission objectives. This had been true somewhere have been humans fighting. The time to consider the impact of this is before you deploy the solider. Ergo, to affect change, we must look at the government and not the solider.

sureaboutthis 9y ago

Yeah, the Iraqis were just sittin' around, doing nothin', having a Bud. Does anyone remember Kuwait?

musage 9y ago
Remember Saddam being just a-okay for the US as an ally in the 1980s, during and after all sorts of atrocities he did to Iraqis and Iranians? Remember the theater when former friend was suddenly the next Hitler? Such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony ?
dingaling 9y ago
Of course I remember Kuwait, slant-drilling under the Iraqi border. And the apparent, later denied, US tolerance or at least indifference when the Iraqi ambassador stated that Iraq would take direct action if Kuwait was not called into order.

snarfy 9y ago

Even with waning religious views the US is still a fairly religious and mostly christian country. I don't understand the pride at all. Pride is a sin.

LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
A slaves spirit has to be like this, a nice, shiny face to those carrying the whip, a raging redirected hatred, to those stripped of all rights by his master.

taneq 9y ago

The support is for individuals, not necessarily the institution.

jstanley 9y ago
But the individuals are doing the work for the institution. If they'd just refuse (for example, don't sign up to be a soldier working on behalf of an institution you ostensibly don't support), then it wouldn't get done.
- taneq 9y ago
  People who don't support the military won't sign up at all. People who do sign up don't have full information on all of the operations they'll be involved in at the time they sign up, and by the time they do have that information they generally cannot legally dissent.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I suppose it's better to murder some foreigners than to illegally dissent.

neverartful 9y ago

"I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?" I believe one of the key points is that it's not the foot soldier who makes the decision to start a war. When the soldier was drafted into the military, they had absolutely NO control whatsoever. In times without the draft (volunteer forces), one may say that individuals have some control by NOT volunteering (enlisting). But even that argument is incomplete. People enlist in the military for different reasons, and it's not as simple as pro-war vs anti-war sentiment. Some of the reasons why some enlist: economic (to support themselves and their family), learn trade/skills, carry on family legacy, sense of duty to country, to see the world, physical and mental challenge/discipline, become a fighter, coercion by others, etc. Even if a person enlists because they desire combat, that person still doesn't have any authority or ability to start a conflict. Once in combat, there's still a chain of command and accountability. When a country engages in military conflict, it is due to the decision of politicians. And once the conflict begins, it is the foot soldiers who pay the highest price. To give a counter-example to the Vietnam war, what would have happened if all of the Allied military forces rebelled and refused to participate in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in WW2? Or even if the US decided to not fight in WW2, despite Pearl Harbor attack? The officer who gave the command to massacre civilians in My Lai was wrong. Other individuals throughout the conflict inevitably did wrong. I believe that the vast majority of those who fought did so admirably and honorably. And I believe that I can have this opinion and still not be pro-war.

system16 9y ago

"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad." ~ Frankie Boyle.

slantedview 9y ago

100,000s were murdered in Vietnam as well. That the US played a role in further mass murders in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on, is the legacy of the US never having the honesty to own up to its actions. It should all be condemned. The problem is that the political elite in the US doesn't see it that way. Military leaders from Vietnam who committed mass murder were awarded commendations. Soldiers who raped and tortured women and children were given awards for kill counts. A Secretary of State whose actions led to the genocide of millions of people still enjoys political celebrity. And a President who killed tens of thousands of civilians by remote control was given a Peace Prize. This is America.